Countdown to a cataclysm

August 6, 2005 — 10.00am

The sky burst into flames and the ground turned into a living hell. It was 8.15am on August 6, 1945, and "Little Boy" had just exploded over Hiroshima. Just three days later, at 11.02am, the same fate befell the historic city of Nagasaki when "Fatman" detonated over that once bustling port city.

By December, the combined effects of both atomic bombings was more than 200,000 deaths, and more than 400,000 others directly affected by the A-bombs' fearsome force.

The bombs exploded 500 metres above the cities, with the fireballs growing rapidly to a diameter of nearly 500 metres, emitting strong thermal rays and shining for about 10 seconds after the explosion.

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Within the fireball area, the temperature rose to above 4000 degrees, nearly three times the temperature required to melt iron. The expansion of the fireball created a high-pressure, highly destructive shock wave, followed by a high-speed wind. The wind velocity of the blast at the hypocentre was about 440 metres a second. In Hiroshima, the shock wave dissipated only after it had travelled about 11 kilometres in 30 seconds.

As nuclear physicist Naomi Chino notes, in order to grasp the power of the atomic bombs, one should realise that one A-bomb was equivalent to 15 kilotons of TNT. For this scale of destruction to be matched by conventional bombing, between 3000 and 4000 B-29 planes would have been required.

The mushroom cloud, now synonymous with nuclear destruction, was caused by the disappearance of the fireball, leaving a vacuum that sucked dust, air, rubble and people into the hypocentre, and rising as high as 9000 metres. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the A-bombs caused acute injuries that killed people five kilometres from the hypocentre.

The thermal rays not only caused flash burns on humans but also set everything flammable on fire. Of about 75,000 homes in Hiroshima more than 70,000 were destroyed. Many thousands of those people within two kilometres of the blast, having survived the initial explosion, were burnt alive, trapped under rubble in a "sea of fire" that consumed both cities in the hours following detonation.

For those people within a kilometre of the hypocentre, death was overwhelmingly instant and painless. Such was the intensity of the heat and fire from the bombs' thermal rays that all that remained of some victims were their shadows on nearby walls and footpaths. In Nagasaki, the charcoal remains of many were found exactly as they were at the time of death; nurses with one arm outstretched waving goodbye to friends, students in sitting positions, and teachers standing upright at their lecture platforms.

In his famous book, The Bells of Nagasaki, Dr Takashi Nagai - an atomic bomb victim who died of leukemia in 1951 - spoke of how the bomb's gamma rays easily passed through the wooden walls of Japanese houses and even comparatively thick concrete walls. As each bodily organ has its own period of incubation after radiation exposure, many victims deteriorated day by day. This process occurred quicker among the young. The pattern continued at a regular pace until October.

Radiation victims also encompassed those who were outside the exposed area at the time of the bombing. These were the so-called victims of residual radiation. This is a condition caused by touching or being exposed to objects and buildings that were contaminated by the A-bomb's radiation. In the case of Nagasaki, people who had travelled from nearby mountain villages to help with the rescue efforts were often condemned to die because they had carried bodies and dug up rubble in the days after the blast.

A lasting consequence of the nuclear destruction is the controversy surrounding the decision to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population. Supporters of the decision argue that the bombings saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives because they forced a quick end to a terrible war and prevented the need for a massive land invasion of Japan. Opponents argue the bombings were an indiscriminate and intentional killing of non-combatants in a densely populated area, and thus constituted a war crime. They also say Japan was within months of total collapse due to a dire food shortage, and would have probably surrendered by the end of 1945.

The American development of the atomic bomb, code-named the Manhattan Project, was initiated in 1941 under the guidance of the scientist Robert Oppenheimer, in reaction to concerns by esteemed émigré scientists such as Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard that Nazi Germany had already begun a nuclear development program. In 1943, the Japanese military had started its own atomic bomb program. A lack of funds and resources killed off both projects. The Manhattan Project on the other hand was a huge undertaking, costing in the 1940s a staggering $US2 billion.

With the ending of the war in Europe in May came tremendous pressure on the United States president, Harry Truman, to end the war in the Pacific. There had been immense loss of American and Japanese life on the island of Okinawa in April 1945, where 100,000 Japanese troops, 92,000 Japanese civilians and more than 12,000 Americans died.

The Okinawa campaign and the fierce and often suicidal resistance of the defenders convinced Truman and his military planners that a land invasion of Japan would almost certainly result in hundreds of thousands of fatalities. Truman would later claim that this was the outstanding factor behind the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So why were these two cities chosen? The historian Richard B. Frank notes that the initial target cities included Niigata, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura. Kyoto was originally considered but ruled out because of its cultural value. Tokyo was not on the list because of the presence of the emperor but also because by August 1945 Tokyo was already "practically rubble". Other options were discussed, including detonating an atomic bomb in Tokyo Bay (for visual effect) or issuing a warning in advance. These ideas were not seriously countenanced because of a fear of the propaganda loss and the grave danger of an A-bomb falling into the enemy's hands or not working.

Instead, it was generally agreed that for maximum visual and psychological effect the bomb should strike a city of military significance, previously untouched by mass aerial bombing and of appropriate size and topography to ensure the utmost effectiveness. Hiroshima and Nagasaki met all the conditions. Two cities situated in a basin and surrounded by mountains ensured the blasts would be at their most devastating within a five-kilometre diameter. Tragically for Nagasaki, on the morning of August 9, it was not the intended target. Instead, the city of Kokura was set to share the same fate of Hiroshima three days earlier. Haze and cloud cover over Kokura however forced the plane to fly south and bomb the back-up target of Nagasaki.

Opponents of the nuclear attacks point to more sinister motives. Dr Tatsuichiro Akizuki, speaking on behalf of Nagasaki's victims, said that the then foreseeable outbreak of tensions in the postwar world between the US and the Soviet Union led the Americans to use the bombings to "jump to an early lead in the new rivalry". By July 1945, the Soviet Union was seriously planning to advance on Japan from the north via Korea and China. There is substance to the argument that the atomic bombings not only served to terrify the Japanese but also to convince the Soviet Union of US military superiority.

Victims also view the bombings as an opportunity taken by the US military to test and display the awesome power of its new, expensive weapon in the midst of war. The bombings therefore served multi-faceted purposes: a quick end to the war, the acquisition of scientific knowledge by testing a nuclear device in warfare and a tacit warning to a Soviet empire intent on expanding its influence after World World II. The theory of the intimidation of the Soviet Union via A-bombs is supported by many Nagasaki victims who point to the short 72-hour period between the two strikes. Japan's rulers, they argue, had just been coming to terms with the atomic destruction of Hiroshima when Nagasaki was razed to the ground, and thus had insufficient time in which to initiate surrender proceedings. The Soviet Union had declared war on Japan on August 8, the day before. Thus the bombing hastened the end of the war and rendered the Soviet advance unnecessary.

Frank, however, counters this theory by citing evidence that immediately after news of Hiroshima reached Tokyo, leading militarists argued that the US probably did not have many A-bombs and thus Hiroshima might have been a one-off. They also believed that outraged world opinion would prevent another atomic attack. Frank argues that Nagasaki was bombed to dispel this notion and thus leave the Japanese militarists with no other choice but to surrender.

Initially, the US had intended a longer time between bombings, but a forecast of inclement weather over Kokura for the days after August 9 led to the hastened decision to strike earlier with the second bomb.

Sixty years on, the memories and suffering are still real. They are exacerbated by a fear that the world is slowly forgetting, and with their passing, the sacrifice of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will become but driftwood in the tides of a modern world that does not seem to pay heed to the lessons of history.

More than 2000 years ago, Plato said only the dead truly see the end of war. The 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lends credence to this view and bestows a responsibility on all of us not to forget, and a duty through protest and determination to make Hiroshima and Nagasaki the first and last nuclear attacks in our troubled history.